Apparatus and systems for counting corn silks or other plural elongated strands and use of the count for characterizing the strands or their origin

Abstract

Apparatus and systems for relatively high throughput counting of elongated strands including silks of a plant are disclosed. One apparatus or system includes segregating similar sized pieces of silks from a section of the plant's silk brush using a tool adapted to obtain uniform samples and system quantitatively counting the pieces by automation. The automated system can be a digital image of the pieces distributed across or above a surface, and image analysis to derive a count of individual pieces. An alternative automated system moves the pieces sequentially and substantially singulated past a detector.

Description

RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119 to provisional application Ser. No. 61 / 091,054 filed Aug. 22, 2008, which application is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.I. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]A. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention relates to counting of relatively small, discrete elongated strands or items automatically or semi-automatically with relatively high throughput and acceptable accuracy and, in particular, using the counting in a variety of applications. One specific application of the invention is counting relatively small, elongated parts of a plant (e.g. silks of a maize ear), and using the count for beneficial purposes such as, for example, characterizing a plant or its genotype, or determining if a plant or its genotype has desirable traits or characteristics for further research or commercial purposes.[0004]B. Problems in the Art[0005]Advancements in performance of plants are highly desirable...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0022]One aspect of the present invention relates to apparatus and systems to automatically or semi-automatically count silks of an ear of maize to reduce labor and time overhead of manual counting. The apparatus and systems can be applied to analogous counting of silk on other types of plants, or counting of other plant parts or related items, or to counting of non-plant items.

[0023]Another aspect of the present invention is to increase speed of obtaining data about silk count from an ear of maize. The data can be advantageously used for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to, (a) making earlier and better selections of plants exhibiting desirable phenotype or genotype, (b) understanding the biological processes of the plant for research and development purposes, or (c) planning and business management related to producing seed from the plants.

[0024]Another aspect of the invention relates to obtaining a quantitative sample of a plurality of elongated strands or pieces in a form that can be counted using an image evaluation apparatus or system. In the case of silk of maize, a further aspect of the invention includes the ability to obtain the sample without adversely affecting the ear.

[0025]A further aspect of the invention includes a high throughput system for quantifying relatively small, elongated pieces. A quantitative sample of cuttings of the pieces is obtained and suspended in a liquid. The sample is placed in isolation and the cuttings that comprise the sample are encouraged to distribute evenly generally in a plane. An image taken essentially orthogonal to the plane, and focused at or near the plane, is analyzed with image measurement or analysis software pre-programmed to recognize and count each object in the image which is indicative of a cutting from the sample. The image of each of multiple samples can be taken efficiently and sequentially, and stored. Image analysis can also occur efficiently. This can result in relatively high throughput of multiple samples compared to prior apparatuses and systems.

[0026]A further aspect of the invention comprises accurate and reliable quantification of the number of pieces based on quantification of the sample cuttings of the pieces, and then use of the quantification. The use could simply be a statistically valid or acceptable count, or could be used in characterizing the sample, the pieces from which the sample was taken, or some other parameter related to the pieces or sample. For example, with respect to maize silk, the silk count quantification could be used for, inter alia, selection purposes in plant breeding, genetic advancement, crop production, evaluation of the effects of transgenic manipulation or to identify molecular markers associated with silk production or ear growth. Another aspect using silk quantification is to assess the impact of cultural and environmental factors on silk production. It can also be used to identify plants or varieties of plants with desirable traits or characteristics for commercial or research purposes. For example, the invention allows researchers to quickly extract silk from individual plants of maize and quantitatively determine the number of silks per ear. This information can be used to determine the yield potential of parent lines, which can be used for decisions about use of a parent line in commercial seed production. The information can be used as phenotypic information to search for molecular markers for silk production.

Problems solved by technology

This can result in relatively high throughput of multiple samples compared to prior apparatuses and systems.

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